


A Visit

by prizewinningfruitcake



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, King Alistair, Past Relationship(s), slightly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 16:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17247401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prizewinningfruitcake/pseuds/prizewinningfruitcake
Summary: Alistair's visiting Vigil's Keep and has snuck off to Amaranthine with Halsa. They have a drink.A kiss prompt from Tumblr - needing to kiss to hide from bad guys





	A Visit

He shouldn’t be here. He’s bound to be recognized, a rope he imagines tied around him and looping all the way back to the palace in Denerim.

“Alright there?” Halsa turns back to him without stopping. She’s got a nasty cut, a slash through her left eyebrow and beginning again on her cheek. A new scar to join the smaller one on her chin. She looks different on the whole, more difference than six months ought to make.

He does too, he supposes. She made fun of him for his beard, “Look at you, old man. Aw, and just when you’d mastered the old dagger-shave.” 

It was true - he’d rather hack at his face himself outdoors in that cloudy cracked mirror they carried than have someone else hold his chin and do it for him. Besides, it makes him look older, and it seems to annoy his attendants. 

“Alistair.”

She’s stopped now. He jerks back to attention, jarred at hearing his full name from her. It’s always been Pilgrim or Al or Chum. Love, she called him once, but not anymore. Not for a while.

“I’m alright,” he says, glancing past her down the narrow street. “Just - are you sure about this?”

“About needing a drink? Yeah.”

Alistair smiles and waves for her to lead the way again, which she does, winding through the back alleys of her own Arling. He isn’t sure if that’s because of him or just a habit. 

When they reach the tavern, she leads him through a side door, exchanges nods and a few playful punches with the kitchen staff. “Gets old drinking at the Keep,” she explains. 

She must come here often. With Oghren probably. Or maybe with that long-haired mage who seems always to be smirking at him. Who last night leaned over to whisper in Halsa’s ear and made her laugh and kick him under the table.

“I rather like Amaranthine,” Halsa says when she returns, sets two overfull ales on the table. “Be nice to live here, I bet.”

“Oh really?” Alistair takes a careful drink, steadying himself.

“Yeah. By the water maybe.”

“I thought you didn’t like the water.”

“I don’t like being _in_ the water. Near it’s alright.”

They don’t talk much about their daily goings-on. They don’t talk much about the Blight. Having exhausted most of their gossip, they’re left largely with hypotheticals. 

“What would you do if you lived here?” he asks, propping his chin on his hand. 

She thinks on it. “Dunno. Fight here and there. Drink. Give the guards grief, most probably.”

“That sounds like you,” he says, though he imagines that would bore her more quickly than she thinks. “It does seem nice here. What little of it I’ve seen.”

She moves closer to him, both of them sitting against the corner. “What about you?”

“If I lived here?” 

She nods, and he leans back, considering. 

“Whatever I wanted,” he says, his chest beginning to ache at the thought. “I’d go to the market in the morning, stay out late, go fishing in a little rowboat.” She laughs, possibly at the image of him in a rowboat. “I’d walk Onion all around the docks and let him sniff everything he wants.”

Onion, her dog, who leapt into Alistair’s arms the moment he saw him.

Halsa chokes on her ale and looks up. “Onion’s there?” 

“Of course.” 

He waits for her to ask the next logical question, her lips parting slowly as if she hasn’t decided yet. 

Then they’re flooded with daylight, the door swinging open to let in a group of armored men. Looking for someone.

He looks down instinctively, hiding his face. He knew this was a bad idea. The King of Ferelden cannot simply dodge his guards and go out drinking.

Halsa puts a rough hand on his leg, holding him there while she assesses. Blast the timing, just as it was beginning to feel like they were alone for once.

The men move towards the bar, and she’s blurred at the corner of his vision, shifting to block him from view.

“Al,” she whispers, and when he turns her face is on his, a hand pulling his collar down. Their lips meet, sweet and strange and familiar.

He doesn’t know if this is a disguise tactic or just hurrying the inevitable in case he’s about to be dragged back home. He doesn’t care. He holds the back of her head, kissing hard to make up for all the times he wanted to and didn’t. She teases his mouth open, deepening, a taste of her, and he stifles a moan. Whatever happens, he sincerely hopes he won’t have to stand for a few moments. 

She’s breathless when she breaks away, leaves her hand on his face. 

“They’re going,” she says. “They weren’t looking for you.”

“Bless those big ears,” he says, and she scrunches her face in mock anger.

She presses in to kiss him again quickly, and tugs his beard. “Scratchy.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I don’t know yet. What’s the Queen think?”

They’ve neither of them mentioned her yet. He half hoped they wouldn’t. “She doesn’t kiss me,” he says.

“Never?”

“Aside from at the wedding.”

“Huh. Well maybe I do like it. It looks awfully nice on you.”

He could ask after her, about her smirky mage or that other handsome scowling fellow he met. But he doesn’t. He thinks he knows the answer.

And it seems they haven’t run out of time quite yet.

“Anyway,” he settles back in, lacing his fingers with hers. “You were saying?”


End file.
